iPod Users Buy CDs, Shun iTunes 550
twitter writes, "The BBC's summarizes a Jupiter Research study, 'iPod fans shunning iTunes store.' From the article: '83% of iPod owners do not buy digital music regularly... only 5% of the music on an iPod will be bought from online music stores. The rest will be from CDs the owner of an MP3 player already has or tracks they have downloaded from file-sharing sites... [T]he only salient characteristic shared by all owners of portable music players was that they were more likely to buy more music — especially CDs.' This is despite years of iTunes promotion and apparent success. Given the outright failure of other music services, it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it."
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it odd how I'm so anti-iTunes due to the stated reasons, but I'm more than willing to buy games on Xbox Live Arcade, seeing as they fit within similar restrictions. Well, only if they're original and not repackaged retro-games I've played to death.
It probably has to do with the fact that Xbox Live Arcade games are only available through a restricted medium, where I can bypass iTunes and buy a non-DRMed CD and Vorbis it.
Re:What a bad statistic (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah...I had to go through a few weeks of burning my discs to MP3 years ago to get my CDs into iTunes. There is no way in hell I would have repurchased even a tenth of this stuff through iTMS. That doesn't mean, I won't buy stuff through it -- I've gotten a LOT of music through their store...but most of the time, its a quick purchase to see if I like an artist enough to look for their CDs in the store.
Honestly, the iTMS (and not just 'iTunes) is the reason my CD purchases have gone up. At the same time, I was a stickler for this belief back when I was doing the 'napster' thing...I'd listen to the music once and if I liked it, I'd buy it...if not, I'd delete it instantly (never understood the idiots that say they'd never buy the song, yet don't feel the need to get rid of it out of their library -- if its not worth buying, morally its not worth keeping). iTMS is the perfect legal way to sample an artist or genre...
Re:True, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
magnatune.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only do they not have DRM, but they encourage you to give away up to three copies of the music you buy, as a form of advertising.
They have a sliding scale on prices: you can choose what you want to pay, within a reasonable range. (I just checked, and at least for the album I checked, the range was from $5 to $18.) If you only like one song on an album, pay less for the album. If you really want to encourage an artist to make more albums, pay more. That's cool.
When you buy an album, the artist gets 50% of whatever you pay. Not 50% of the profits, and then they cook the books so they "don't have any profits"... 50% of the gross income. That's outstanding. I love their slogan: "We are not evil."
I have no connection to them, other than being a satisfied customer.
steveha
iTunes and the like are great 'preview' services (Score:1, Interesting)
At the risk of going off-topic, I personally do not have iTunes, but I do have URGE, and interestingly enough, it turns out that it allows me to listen to stuff I have never heard before, which has caused me to significantly increase my purchases of CDs. For example, I can go year-by-year and see what what was popular (I started in 1965 and worked my way up to 1983 so far). There is a wealth of GREAT music out there, it is just a matter of sifting through the hype and the junk. Thanks, URGE, for turning me on to such a plethora of undiscovered music!
The kicker is that I have not paid a single PENNY. I just keep getting new trial sevices. If I ever want to dowload a track, I suppose I *could* rip the DRM from it with FairUse4wm, but honestly it just sounds like crap (128 kbps never sounded 'CD Quality' to me).
In the end, I am opened up to new musical possibilities, from which I can simply buy a CD if I really like it - which I have done! No DRM, superb quality, and the flexibility to play it in my car, iPod, home or work PC, bring it to a friend's house, sell it in a yard sale, whatever....IT'S MINE MOTHERFUCKAHH!
Re:No, no, no (Score:2, Interesting)
Another point people often mention is the convenience of the iTunes service, but in reality it's no more convenient buying a song off iTunes than it is to fire up your favourite file sharing program and get a nice mp3 of the song you want in minutes.
I got caught up in the hype (Score:2, Interesting)
Everyone is missing the point! (Score:3, Interesting)
My entire music collection is legal, but I can tell you one of the major way my friends get music - from their friends, through sharing their music collections.
Everyone here on SlashDot seems to be saying "This survey shows that people would rather buy CDs than music online! This probably says they do not want DRM!"
I think the article is saying "People will take *free* music their friends recommend over paying for music online."
This is not at all surprising, and really does not speak to people's views on DRM.
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:3, Interesting)
Aren't you jumping the gun a little? The way I see it, he didn't put any FUD about Apple - unless you can buy songs at a higher bitrate than 128kbps. Also, his statement about ripping flexibility is correct - you can use the highest bitrate available for your favorite codec, or go lossless. Then he stated a personal preference, high-rate WMA. Now, I'm no MS user (let alone fan of WM(A|V) ) but perhaps the guy didn't want to bother with installing a new ripper on his WinXP and, since MediaPlayer rips to WMA, he went for the highest quality available. Heck, I'm doing an equivalent thing on my machine - why bother installing another lossless encoder (monkey's audio, apple lossless) when flac is available from my distro and does the job nicely? For that matter, would you install something else when iTunes gives you AAC and apple lossless?
Just because he's not worshiping the not-so-high-rate AAC encoding that Apple uses for the iTunes store does not make him a 'MS fan spreading FUD about Apple'.
And that was for low-to-medium bitrates, AFAIR. High bitrate encodings are pretty much on par across the established codecs. So depending on your favorite software and the trade-offs you're willing to live with, you can choose any of them. Who is spreading FUD now?
Depends on the format (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually did some blind tests about a year ago. I encoded a music piece in different formats at different bitrates, jumbled the names and tried to figure out which one was which. It's definitely possible to hear the difference between a 128 MP3 and a 192 MP3. Interestingly, I wasn't able to hear the difference between lossless, 192 MP3 and 128 AAC. Now I'm not saying that with better stereo equipment and/or better ears than mine, you couldn't hear it. But for me personally, 128 AAC is quite simply good enough.
No choice where I live (Score:3, Interesting)
Get off the DRM Hatewagon for just a moment (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Fear of buying on the Internet. Everyone isn't a slashdot nerd.
2. Relatively low quality. 128kbps mp4 3. Fear of viruses/malware destroying system. No it doesn't have to come from the music to make you lose everything. Backups are not that common among the masses. I think I read a slashdot submission discussing this recently.
4. Built in backup system in the CD. For whatever reason, it's great to have a backup and the original CD makes a good one.
5. $.99 isn't that great of a price if you want most/all of an album. It solves the problem of having to pay $15 for an album to get a single song but considering the above, it isn't exactly cut-rate pricing.
6. Selection. There is still more available on CD than itunes.
7. Sony. They make me never want to buy anything legit again.
8. XXIA. See 7 above. I know 7 and 8 sound like DRM issues but they aren't here. It's not the DRM infestation, it's the business practices. I can live with Fairplay, not with these guys.
9. Trust. While I don't recall Apple breaking it (have they?), many have. Will my purchases be tracked? Will the music I play in my computer be sent to Real?
10. Format. Sure, mp4 is the flavor of the month now but what's next? I can always re-rip a CD (been there, done that) into the newer better format but my $.99 music is stuck for life.
There you go, ten reasons I can think of while my oatmeal gets cold that DRM shouldn't be blamed for market share. Perhaps ten reasons also why people who get p2p music are still trying to get what they want in a world that has turned their backs on the consumer.
O.K. Have at it.
Re:DRM is a hassle (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:but I already have a TON of CD's (Score:2, Interesting)
Almost everything I bought 20 years ago I no longer have.
Just sayin'.
DRM (Score:2, Interesting)
It's human nature to not care about something until you need it. Rights are unfortunately one of those things.
Most people have never even heard the term "DRM". Of those that have, only a minority know what it stands for and understand what rights it takes away. Those of us who hate DRM and everything it stands for are always depressed by how apathetic and uninformed most of the population seems to be.
But DRM is slowly starting to burn people -- ordinary people -- people who previously knew nothing about DRM and didn't care. People are finding out the hard way that when their PC dies, they can't copy the songs back to the PC off their iPod. They are finding out the hard way that they can't take that AAC song they bought on iTunes and convert it to a format that will import freely into other software or work with certain devices. As ordinary people increasingly run into these scenarios, they will learn about DRM the hard way. The good news is that they will also immediately dislike it and be pissed off about it.
Give it another 10-20 years, and I think what you'll see isn't a lack of DRM in the marketplace, but a huge amount of consumer awareness of it and hatred for it. That will set the stage well for things like changing the law, mass-scale piracy, or other methods of fighting back.